The power to tax is the main source of state power. Without tax revenue, everything else the state does is toothless. Somebody could get to the top of a hill and shout the laws, but without either agreement from the people, or the violent enforcement of those laws, he’s just shouting into the ether. He thinks he’s the state, but there’s nobody around him who cares about what he says. Perhaps his authoritarian attitude leads to some people following him, or perhaps it leads to him getting beat up, but it doesn’t lead to, what most people would call, a state.
It is with tax revenue that the state can pay soldiers and policemen who enforce the law. Now once this is achieved, the state can then build off of that, monopolizing roads, canals, railroads, though today in the US mainly just roads. Monopolizing some types of mail delivery, monopolizing schools and forcing people to go to school for 12 years, which creates a compliant population trained to follow the orders of the teacher, which results in even greater extortion. All of this stems from that basic ability: to tax. When talking about politics, people talk about so many things – war, the economy, healthcare – but they don’t see the basic issue, they forget that it all comes from taxation and they don’t think about taxation.
Most people pay the taxes assigned to them because they think it is necessary, or legitimate, or something along those lines.
Here is the legal definition of extortion:
“The obtaining of property from another induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.”
That it is identical to taxation. Because what happens if you don’t pay your taxes? You get thrown in prison. And if you resist arrest, and then resist being thrown into prison, you will be killed. Perhaps it is a necessary evil to keep things running, I don’t think it is, but it is still extortion. And I oppose this extortion on many grounds.
I don’t mean to insult your intelligence if you already recognize the nature of the state, but there are a lot of people who don’t.
When I bring this point up, I often get the response, “yes I know the state is an extortion racket, so what!? You still haven’t proved how law, defense, schools, regulation, and many other things can be done in a stateless society!” There are many people who still believe that the state is not an extortion racket, or that the extortion is justified, which is why I’m talking about this. I have a whole book if the reader of this is interested.
When pointing out that the state is an extortion racket, many will say that it is justified because of an implicit agreement. By living in a place called, “the united states”, you are agreeing to pay for various “public services”. What is a public service? Well whatever the state decides.
First of all, this is a contract few ever signed. And even if you signed something saying that “you agreed to pay taxes”, this is irrelevant since as a child you were required to attend for 10 years, though practically for 12 years, a school that is either run by or approved by the state. Even if you went to a private school, that school was approved by the state, and you were required by the state to go to some school they approve of.
Most kids weren’t able to see the injustice at the time. I certainly didn’t, I just saw it as something unpleasant I had to do, like paying taxes, but I see it now.
Also, if you ever bought anything as a child, you paid sales tax. Thus you paid taxes then, which surely cannot be considered something you agreed to.
So even if you agreed to taxation as an adult, the fact that the state taxed you as a child, robbing from you at the very minimum 525 days as a child which you can never get back supposedly for the purpose of “education”, makes me view the state as a criminal institution on those grounds alone. In these terms, is it not clear that children pay more in taxes than adults?
Perhaps the statist will say, “well, do you ever use any state service? have you ever called the cops?”, and that’s supposed to be proof that you have acquiesced to taxation. For example, if you go to a diner and eat a meal, it is expected that you pay for the meal. And the statist will say that it is expected that you pay for state services in the same way.
The difference is that with state services, you have already paid; in fact you were forced to pay for them. If the state schools you were forced to attend fed you, and you ate the cafeteria food they gave you, would that be endorsing the state schools? Of course not. And neither is using state roads. Most people can see the inconsistency when this is pointed out to them.
Failing that, the statist will often say some variation of “love it or leave it”. “Well if you don’t like civilization” – they typically call the extortion racket civilization – “well if you don’t like civilization, then go to Somalia”. In my book I have a section on Somalia. But that’s what they’ll say, “if you don’t like civilization, go to Somalia!”
What a statement like this shows is that they don’t understand the issue. The United States Federal Government claims much more land than state employees can ever even touch. And so the idea that they “own” this land is absurd.
And 300 million people can agree that the state owns some land, but where do those 300 million people get off deciding who gets to own all of this land? And do these 300 million people know each other and decide upon the same thing?
We could do this all day, but what it comes down to is that the state is an extortion racket, and any attempt to justify the state is as silly as justifying an extortion racket.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Extortion
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